Print - Joy Division

Swissted is an ongoing project by graphic designer Mike Joyce from New York City. Drawing from his love of punk rock and swiss modernism, two movements that have (almost) nothing to do with one another, Mike has redesigned vintage punk, hardcore, new wave, and indie rock show flyers into international typographic style posters. Each design is set in lowercase berthold akzidenz-grotesk medium (not helvetica). Every single one of these shows actually happened.

How were the shapes, patterns designed for specific bands?

Mike Joyce: Many of the original Swiss Style poster designs were abstract representations of their subject matter and Swissted was created in that spirit. If you look at Josef Muller-Brockmann’s “Musica Viva” series, there’s not a musical instrument or musician to be seen. He used shape, structure, motion, color, and typography to evoke the feeling of music. They somehow achieve perfect communication through abstraction. It’s kind of the opposite of how things are done today where everything has to be so literal.